


Cutting Cards

by YouScruffyNerfHerder



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Buddy cop adventures, Canon Compliant, Humor, Humorous Ending, No shipping, Post-Canon, it's just fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 07:24:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15747045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YouScruffyNerfHerder/pseuds/YouScruffyNerfHerder
Summary: Connor and Hank go to a casino to investigate a few deviant happenings with the gambling machines.Well. Hank is investigating, anyway.





	Cutting Cards

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for joining me in this fun buddy cop bit! Special thanks to the "Deviant Behavior" community for encouraging me and my friend E who is actually from Detroit who gave me some ideas.

It took Hank a full minute to pull Connor’s attention from the beeping, blinking sounds, the clink of ice in glasses, the swirl of cigar smoke in the air.

“Hey! We gotta mission here!” the Lieutenant demanded, snapping his fingers in front of the android’s eyes.

Connor gave the poker chip in his fingers a twist, a flick, a flip, recalibrating appropriately for the difference in weight from his beloved quarter.

“Of course, Hank,” he replied.

Hank snatched the chip off of Connor’s fingertip where it rapidly spun.

“That means _pay attention_.”

Connor pouted, “I am fully capable of doing both.”

“Casinos are dangerous places, there’s a whole lot goin’ on ya don’t realize, stuff ya don’t always see.”

“I imagine this is why you had me view all three versions of _Casino Royale_ even though I could have processed the data much more efficiently on my own.”

“Hey now, Daniel Craig was a great man and those movies were _good!_ Even with yer algorithms ruinin’ the endings,” Hank protested, “And another thing, you keep that kinda crap to yerself, ya hear me? Ain’t no one knows that ya got that predictive shit and if they catch ya countin’ cards, we could get tossed out before the investigation even begins.”

Connor plucked the chip out of Hank’s hand and began spinning it again, a goofy lopsided grin on his face.

“But perhaps a little extra money could be beneficial to our work, and an android doing will against a human could prove interesting, _distracting_ entertainment.”

Hank breathed a long-suffering sigh, suddenly half-regretting the freedom-for-androids thing.

“Fine,” he hugged, “But don’t spend it all in one bet, make it stretch.”

Connor smiled before speeding off, “Thank you, Lieutenant!”

“And don’t get cocky neither!” Hank shouted at his back.

“Now ta actually do some work.”

The casino had been reporting some strange happenings, lately. Lots of slots giving out huge jackpots long before they were programmed to, lots of players randomly finding they had _just enough_ money on their cards to play just _one more time_ even though they swore they were cleaned out.

Hank normally wouldn’t be adverse to some folks down on their luck going home with more than they would have otherwise, but suspicious behavior was suspicious and although ‘deviancy’ was no longer a crime, the Detroit Police still used their famous team to investigate strange android happenings.

He wished there was someone else, though. Someone who didn’t have to think twice about complementary drink service.

His hands clenched into fists at his sides and he willed himself to march down the gated path between rows and rows of slot machines.

Today was gonna be a long day.

* * *

There was so much to see and do at the casino, Connor had trouble deciding where to start. Video poker machines called out to him, both in enticing sounds and flashing lights, but also over android binary channels, advertisements made only for people like him.

The fact that that even _existed_ and was programmed into the machines made him more than slightly overjoyed, the poker chip flitting from hand to hand, between and over and under his fingers at a dizzying speed.

His predictive algorithms announced recent winners and charts of odds and endless paragraphs of complicated rules and combinations. Every time he considered a slot, another nearby had better odds, bigger jackpots, cooler pictures.

Then he spotted it, on the far side of the hall.

The poker table.

His chip landed flat in his palm with a heavy thud. He sent furious signals to his human integration protocols to school his face much calmer and more even than he felt. It took everything in him to walk - not run - over to the green-felted table.

* * *

“You Hank Anderson?”

Hank turned to see one of the casino security guards sauntering towards him, hand resting easy on a loaded duty belt.

“Yeah, you know me?”

“Seen you on the TV, boss told me to keep an eye out for you.”

The guard offered Hank a rough handshake, the kind two men working this job alone shared.

“I’m guessing your boss is Mr. Bachman, guy who contacted the PD?”

“Yeah, that’s him. Lemme take you to the office.”

* * *

Connor sank into one of the chairs at the end of the poker table, leaving a seat between him and the two other human players. He may not wear the armband any more and the LED may be facing away from them, but it would be hard to hide his true nature for long and he didn’t want to cause any animosity.

Besides, Blackjack was a more solitary game, silently played with hand signals and quiet confirmations between a split and a double down.

“Can I get this in fives?” the android quietly asked, sliding over the chip.

The dealer, a young man no older than 30 with sandy blonde hair and an unfortunate case of adult acne, silently nodded and neatly piled the money in the appropriate circle.

Gently, without bending the cards, he pulled up his dealt hand.

13.

Hank would tell him it was unlucky, no matter how much statistical evidence Connor could pile on the contrary. Then again, it was difficult to say whether he should hit or stay, he had a 39% chance of going over 21 and busting if he took another card.

He decided to risk it and was rewarded with a 7.

20, and a hand the dealer couldn’t beat.

The next hand, his algorithms’ advice netted him a 17, then a 19, the chips piling very nicely in his corner.

“May I play behind?” Connor heard someone ask.

* * *

“So you see, that slot there,” Bachman explained, tapping the glass of his computer monitor annoyingly with the chewed end of a pen, “Wasn’t supposed to hit jackpot for another 128 plays. But then-”

He tapped a key to advance the security footage.

The slot on the screen burst into manic flashes of light, the player leaping out of his chair, alarmed and elated hands clutching at his bewildered head.

“Anyone touch the slot before this happened?” Hank asked.

Bachman shook his head, “We’ve got field inspectors that check daily around 6 a.m. but they only run the numbers, specialized certified techs gotta come outta the labs in Mississippi to really do anything to ‘em, and then we gotta close the whole floor.”

“Nobody cleans or fixes them up?”

“Nah, not unless they need ‘em. Maybe once a week at most unless we got a bachelorette coming through.”

The man visibly shuddered at that.

The footage played back those glorious few seconds over and over again, the wonder, the glee.

“Go back a bit,” Hank ordered.

The player sat back down, the machine swallowed back its colorful lights.

People walked by, humans and androids both, Hank supposed, but it was hard to tell in the grainy footage. Nothing strange, nothing out of the ordinary… Except-

“Hang on. Zoom in.”

The image swelled bigger and bigger, the pixels blockier and more defined.

A waiter passed by, a tray of drinks balanced expertly on one hand. The other gave a subtle wave in the direction of the slot machine, not enough that anyone would catch it without looking. Two blocks of color on the right side of his head swirled.

“An android is messing with your machines,” Hank announced in awe, “That’s our guy.”

* * *

Connor stared down the Ace of Spades on the opposite side of the table, the irises of his mechanical eyes contracting, analyzing.

“According to my calculations, you have an 87.92% chance if beating my hand. However,” he scooped up both cards and gently turned them over, “The odds were still more in my favor.”

The gathered crowd erupted into cheers.

* * *

Seeing all those androids lined up, all the ones that worked the floor that day, sent shivers up Hank’s spine.

He wished Connor were there. Hank woulda make _him_ deal with this.

They all stared at him with creepy eyes, their stares blank and glassy, silently watching the detective parade up and down the line, trying to determine which it could be.

Hank gritted his teeth together in a frustrated frown.

_Damn._

Why did all of these freaking androids look like the same tall-dark-and-generic? Connor wouldn’t look much out of place among them. Hell, for all he knew one of them could have been one of the white guys from the kitchen, considering not all of them wore LED’s these days.

Hank stared into their vacant eyes, trying to discern what was camera-like iris and what was actual human pupils.

The security cam’s compressed footage didn’t help much either, he couldn’t even pin down the difference between black and brown hair, the only thing he had to go on was to send the blondies and the one unfortunate ginger home.

Too bad the casino couldn’t be assed to buy higher-resolution cameras.

Hank wondered how they haven’t been robbed outright yet.

He sighed and scrunched the notebook in his hand tighter, the cardboard backing creaking in his fist.

“Alright, let’s go over this one more time. I know you guys are capable of lyin’ now, but lyin’ ta police _is_ a crime and our holding cells are mighty uncomfy and don’t come with chargin’ ports,” Hank growled, stomping back to the top of the line.

The androids seemed to stand up straighter at that.

“Where were you?” he demanded of the robot to his left.

“Near the entrance.”

Hank waved him away with the flick of a bitten pencil.

“You?” he asked the next.

“By the bar.”

That one was brushed off.

“And you?”

“I… don’t remember.”

Hank began to walk away but backtracked when he realized it wasn’t some easy answer.

“You _what?_ ”

“I- uhh- was… umm…!”

The detective screwed his eyes up tight and sighed, almost wishing that criminals could at least _try_ coming up with a better, sorrier excuse, that Connor was there with him, that probing memories wasn’t illegal any more.

He didn’t even need to order security to nab the guy, drag him off kicking and protesting.

“Any a’ you also got a sudden lapse of memory?”

No one responded.

“No? Good. Back ta work.”

* * *

The player at the far end of the table had been dealt a two and a five, taking five cards before busting out 23. The human beside him had needed quite a number of cards as well, all low-value, none contributing to his luck.

Connor wondered if he was making the dealer nervous and upsetting normally thorough shuffling routines.

“Would be a shame if you had to take another hit and all the low cards already on the table,” he teased, noting the 16 the dealer had just revealed.

Sweat beaded on the dealer’s forehead, his hand shook as he turned over yet another card.

Jack.

“Whoops.”

Connor leaned casually back in his seat, hands folded behind his head.

* * *

“Look kid, I ain’t mad,” Hank explained, tossing down the thin file of metadata and work history on the table and taking a loud slurp of the coffee in his fist. If only if had whiskey in it. “I just wanna know what happened.”

The android didn’t say anything. He wrapped an arm around his waist, the other hand running up and down above the elbow as he quietly tried to console himself.

Hank wanted to do nothing more than slam a hand on the table, start swearing and yelling and scare the shit out of the thing until he fessed up, but a nagging feeling that sounded an awful lot like his android partner reminded him that ‘perhaps the softer approach would yield more productive results’.

“I’m not sure what you mean, officer-”

 _“I ain’t no uniform!”_ Hank roared, the ‘softer approach’ falling nearly by the wayside, “You been cheatin’ these machines, makin’ the casino call up the PD, wastin’ my time! _Why?_ ”

The android leapt back in his seat.

“I- I’m sorry-!”

“If yer really sorry, you’re gonna gimme all the answers I came here for, and you’re gonna make it snappy!”

“I was… pre-owned. Before the Revolution,” he meekly explained, “My owner, he came here a lot.”

Hank nodded knowingly, “Bet he lost a lotta money here too.”

“He did. All of it, in fact. Soon enough, he couldn’t keep up with my payments, we would lock the doors and shut the blinds until the collectors went away. Soon enough, he’d had enough of that and sold me to pay off his debts. Gave me to the place he liked best and where he knew he’d see me again.”

“And did he? Stop by an’ say hello?”

“Once,” the android admitted, “He put it all on black, even though I tried to tell him not to. He lost everything all over again, except this time he blamed _me_. I never saw him again, but I haven’t forgotten him either.”

“So you were tryna bankrupt the casino then? Revenge?”

The android shook his furious head, small tears projecting at the rims of artificial eyes, “It’s not like that! It’s not like that at all! I thought if I found someone… someone who was having trouble and only came here when they really _really_ needed it, I could help them, and they wouldn’t come back again.   
So I made the slot give them a jackpot. And I looked for someone else who could use some luck. I did it over and over and over again.”

“Any idea on number there, bud?”

“17. I was gonna stop at 21, y’know, just for my own good luck but… here we are.”

Hank nodded, “Here we are.”

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“Hard to say, truth be told. Laws are a bit shaky nowadays, an’ they keep bein’ written and re-written every day it seems. Sure makes my job a pain in the ass. I can put in a good word for ya, though. You seem like a decent kid, reminds me of my partner who’s busy doin’ some undercover work.”

* * *

“Lots of Queens out tonight,” Connor remarked, flipping over his own pair that matched the dealer’s “Wonder if there’s a convention.”

Nearly half the casino was crowded around this one table, the shouts were deafening.

* * *

 

“We’ll see what we can do for ya.”

“Oh thank you!” the android cried, his face looking sickeningly, appropriately grateful, hands clasped in front of his chest, “I don’t know how to thank you enough!”

“Don’t sweat it, kid. I don’t promise ya nothin’ but we don’t dismantle androids for that kinda stuff no more,” Hank said around another gulp of coffee.

* * *

Hank found his so-called fellow investigator near the sliding glass doors of the casino’s entrance, nearly giddy bouncing on his toes to see the Lieutenant again.

“Well, I had a good time. Did you, Hank?” Connor asked, working a chip between his fingers.

Hank swore he saw a faint bluish Thirium bruise blossoming under the android’s collar and traces of smudges in every color of crimson hastily wiped from synthetic skin.

“Suppose ya could say that,” he replied, “Hey wait!”

He snatched the chip from out of the air.

“Where’d ya get this? The color ain’t right, you been takin’ counterfeit-?”

When finally he noticed the amount of zeroes printed around its edge, his eyes nearly popped from his skull.

Hank threw an arm around Connor’s shoulders and pulled him in close in a rough hug.

“Had a great time, buddy. Great time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I'd appreciate any feedback or Kudos!


End file.
